What is a Résumé For?

A résumé is your personal advertisement so you can sell yourself to someone looking to fill out a job vacancy you want. It’s a marketing tool you can land a job with. It can also be used within a company when you want to transfer to another position or get a salary increase.

Just like any advertising tool that sends a message to its target markets to create demand for a product or service, a résumé is the result of purposeful creative thought so that your message of job qualification creates the demand from your target employers. You’re the product you want to sell, and the employers are your market you want to create demand to hire you.

It is, therefore, not surprising that professionals who have a high self-regard take the time and effort to bring their persona to gain the right “product image” a résumé can elicit. It’s no different from crafting the public image marketing gurus work to develop in the products they want to sell. It’s all part of the art of packaging the product

A good marketer is said to be able to make even a mediocre or rubbish product look good in the perception of the market. That’s not about lying about the product, but simply packaging it properly. The same holds for a well-crafted résumé. No need to lie about yourself, since that’s always easily verified by an employer to your disadvantage. A good résumé is all about packaging your qualification so you get noticed, capture the interest of your employer and be considered for an interview.